My experience with
technology in K-12 was very limited and involved a lot of typing. The only memory
that I really have of technology in elementary school is going to computers
class twice a week and having typing lessons. There was an online program that
taught us the home position on the keyboard and to have your pointer fingers on
the F and J keys. The program would also time how fast we could type and it
tried to make it into a game. The faster and more accurate you could type, the
more you would move up levels. There was a skateboarding game that you could
play if you were really good at typing and finished your lessons before class
was over. Throughout the class the teacher always stressed to not look at the
keyboard while typing because you should be able to know where the different
letters are through the online typing program. If she thought that we were
looking at our keyboard too frequently then she would put a pad over the
keyboard that was fitted to it, but covered up all the letters. Being able to
type was a huge stress in my elementary school.
Once I was in
middle school and high school the focus was less on typing and more on doing
research. In middle school we were first introduced to writing research papers.
Granted, they weren’t anything very substantial but it taught us how to find
useful information on the internet. Most of the projects that we had involved
putting together Powerpoint presentations and these incorporated research that
we found, giving us another source for technology education. In high school there wasn’t that much of
technology used. We had computer labs for doing research and typing papers, we
had laptop carts that rarely worked, and there was always the charming
experience of one of my teachers not being able to get their smart board or
internet to work. All and all technology was never that much of a success
throughout my education experience.
